This dino’s fossil claw suggests it snatched eggs, not insects

This dino had a penchant for pilfering eggs.

A new analysis of a roughly 67-million-year-old fossil forelimb and claw suggests that a rare group of diminutive Mongolian dinos may have evolved to steal and eat eggs. The “remarkable” appendage was distinctive enough to classify its owner as a new genus and species, Manipulonyx reshetovi, researchers report December 23 in the Proceedings of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“It’s a spectacular arm,” says Denver Fowler, a paleontologist at the Badlands Dinosaur Museum in Dickinson, North Dakota who was not involved with the study. “The fact that this is the most complete arm of these already bizarre-looking

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